


gone

by calebwidogast



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: made myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26354506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calebwidogast/pseuds/calebwidogast
Summary: klaus realizes ben's not there.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	gone

klaus woke and saw vanya, worrying over him and their siblings, and sighed in relief. she was okay. ben had done it. they had fixed the timeline. he reached out in his mind to find ben so he could turn and ask him how he’d talked vanya down, and instead found a strange emptiness.

he furrowed his brows and raised his hands to his temples on instinct, because sometimes making a line for the energy to travel helped. all it did this time was bring to his attention the screaming of vanya’s scorched captors. he tapped one side experimentally, but the emptiness stayed.

as diego and allison made their way to the window, he looked up and found vanya staring. his face must have asked for him, because she shook her head ever so slightly and then turned her gaze guiltily away.

allison called to them as klaus broke.

ben was gone. for all the minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years he had spent knowing he had lied, had forced ben to stay, had doomed him to an afterlife intertwined with him, knowing he was finally free of it still ached.

he wanted it to go away. so, so badly he wished for something stronger than what was in his flask, or to ruin the other half of his three years sober. he fished for his flask and realized with a jolt that he was waiting for ben’s disapproving sigh, and he pressed his palm to the side of his head. ben was gone.

they were going back to elliot’s. he wasn’t sure when vanya had taken his arm to lead him, but they were on their way. he heard diego, as if he was a mile down the road, ask “klaus? or is it ben-”

vanya shifted beside klaus, and whatever look she had given him must have been as sharp as diego’s knives, because he didn’t push it.

he was glad the ghosts hadn’t followed him, because the alley beside elliot’s was crowded enough as it was. he’d gotten better at ignoring it, with ben’s help and distracting presence, and he thought numbly that at least the hole in his head would keep him distracted enough for now.

elliot sobbed at him with unseeing eyeholes as they came in, and boy, what a way to find out the guy whose home you were using as a base of operations was killed.

“you found your aliens, elliot. what else is there?” klaus mumbled in his direction, and the sobbing quieted.

vanya was still holding his arm. her grip tightened and he wrenched himself away, the weight of everything hitting him again. 

“just… a second.” he finally managed to say, taking the stairs two at a time because he needed space, and if he was on the second floor he couldn’t hear the alley as well, and there was a bed because he really, desperately needed to collect himself.

he slumped down and curled on his side, and against his will, ben’s funeral began playing like five’s stupid tape of the assassination, over and over and over and over, blurring more each time.

he’d never felt this empty before, and definitely not while he was this sober.

his siblings’ voices carried up from downstairs. he tried to focus on that but all it did was remind him of the absence of ben’s snarking at him. he downed what was left in his flask. he watched in his mind’s eye as ben, standing feet away from his own casket, darted his eyes to klaus’s flask and then away again.

klaus had planned to lay here until the funeral loop in his head stopped, but it didn’t seem like that was going to be any time soon, and he could tell that an argument was starting down below.

as he sat up, he wondered if vanya had finally gotten her goodbye.


End file.
